WASHINGTON - With many blaming the growing scope of Katrina's devastation on the Bush administration, Sen. Hillary Clinton called yesterday for a 9/11-style probe into how the federal government responded to the crisis.
"It has become increasingly evident that our nation was not prepared," Clinton (D-N.Y.) said in a letter to Bush asking him to set up a "Katrina Commission."

"The slow pace of relief efforts in the face of a mounting death toll ... seems to confirm that our ability to respond to cataclysmic disasters has not been adequately addressed," she said.

Her call echoed statements of Republicans such as Arizona's Sen. John Kyl, chairman of the Technology and Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who plans a hearing and has said the catastrophe in New Orleans could have a lot in common with a terror attack.

A White House spokeswoman deferred comment to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who appeared on numerous Sunday morning broadcasts insisting there would be time to lay blame later.

Clinton has decided at least one thing without waiting for any commission reports. She said she plans to introduce legislation to split the Federal Emergency Management Agency out of the Department of Homeland Security and give it back a cabinet-level director